JANESVILLE — As local food insecurity grows, the Janesville Farmers Market has teamed with SSM Health and the Wisconsin Nutrition Incentive Network to launch a Double Up Food Bucks program in Janesville.
The Double Up Food Bucks program encourages community members to buy fresh produce by providing a dollar-for-dollar match to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program — or SNAP — spending, up to $20 per week. If a person uses $10 on their EBT card through the SNAP program, they will get $10 in food market tokens.
SNAP provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budgets.
The program comes at a time when food insecurity is becoming a larger issue in Rock County and southern Wisconsin because of inflationary pressures.
The Double Up Food Bucks program was launched in 2009 in Detroit, Michigan before a nationwide expansion.
Amelia Steen-Martin, Janesville Farmers Market Board chair and a nutrition educator in the FoodWIse program at the UW Extension, helped lobby to bring the Double Up program to Wisconsin in 2023 with help from the American Heart Association. It is now at 65 sites across Wisconsin, including Janesville, at farmers markets, grocery stores and co-ops.
“It’s important to share that doing a nutrition incentive program doesn’t just save money for consumers but it improves health for consumers by getting them food that is nutritious for them,” Steen-Martin said.
A shoppers packs fresh asparagus during at the Janesville Farmers Market season in downtown Janesville in early May, 2026.
SSM Health and Farm and Fleet are helping fund a pilot Double Up program in Janesville. Also partners in the Double Up program are Wisconsin Food Hub, Feeding America, Community Action Coalition and FairShare CSA Coalition.
Janesville Farmers Market SNAP tokens may be used to purchase SNAP-eligible items. Double Up Food Bucks tokens may be used to purchase fruits and vegetables.
“We love supporting this program because it benefits local farmers and is also helping to provide fresh groceries to community members in need,” SSM Health Community Health Director Megan Timm said in a statement.
The program comes at a time when food insecurity is becoming a larger issue in Rock County and southern Wisconsin because of inflationary pressures.
Kris Tazelaar, media and public relations manager of Madison-based Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, is not involved with the Janesville program.
But he said it’s a timely program given current economic conditions.
Tazelaar’s organization has been distributing more and more food yearly since the pandemic.
Factors that go into food insecurity, Tazelaar said, include high costs for housing, wages not keeping up with inflation, and rising grocery prices.
Tazelaar pointed toward programs like the Double Up Food Bucks program as beneficial for communities.
“Food service is literally the most efficient way to end hunger,” Tazelaar said.
At food markets, “it’s healthy. It’s nutritious. It’s fresh. It’s the kind of food we want to have people get. It’s the kind of food that people are going to have. It’s a fantastic program when those dollars can be doubled,” Tazelaar added.
Rock County is the second-largest county Second Harvest distributes to, with Dane being the largest. Overall across the region, the amount of food distributed has been going up.
At the end of fiscal year 2025, which was June 2025, Second Harvest distributed just over 26 million pounds of food. That is up from just over 21 million pounds at the same time in 2021 and just over 12 million pounds at the same time in 2015.
Second Harvest projects it will have distributed about 26 million pounds of food by the end of June 2026.
Tazelaar reported that about 70% of our agencies are seeing more people now than at the height of the pandemic.
“There’s no one face to hunger. People like to say, ‘That person is struggling, but that person who is driving a new car so they are not struggling. But, you don’t know that person. They could be underwater with that new car,’” Tazelaar said.
A light was shined on food insecurity during the pandemic, Tazelaar said.
“People still remember that the help is out there. The awareness went up that you can ask for help,” Tazelaar said.
